Elite just made me feel small.

Privata

Privata
Sins the start in elite I found the scale of the universe to be amazing.
Planets , nebula and so on.

But last night something changed : for somereason I counted how many seconds it tooke me to fly over a planet the seize as earth... and then afterwards , a few hours latter I flew over an astroid ring with no intent...
And then it hit me , that astroid ring its bigger than earth by a multiple !

I felt dizzy and sad , are we nothing more than pathetic animals living on a world that is no more important that a spec of dust falling in a pool of water? and ineed we dont matter ,and for some reason after thinking about it for a while I liked that idea , being unimportant made everything make sens.

All the horrors in life , war , death and so on made sens , I allso felt for the first time acceptance towards traumatic events from my chidhood/teenagehood... because I live in a world that is smaller than an astroid ring.


Maybe I am being silly but there you go , elite sort of changed my life...
And I am the sort of person who thinks of space and its sheer scale all the time !
 
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Infidel Deity

Infidel Deity
First acknowledge that there is no meaning in anything what so ever.
Then acknowledge how great and awesome that is.
Everything is everything. :)
 

CMDR Corlas

CMDR Corlas
Privata said:
Maybe I am being silly but there you go , elite sort of changed my life...
And I am the sort of person who thinks of space and its sheer scale all the time !
Click to expand...

The scale of things, in a universal context, are way too big for people to conceive generally, and I totally agree that Elite really does an amazing job at making these vast numbers more tangible.

I remember reading an article a while back about a particularly dense star cluster (looked for it, but I can't find it now). The number seemed impressive at the time, but really didn't mean anything; a few thousands stars in a cluster a dozen or so light years across. After playing Elite though, that number is totally mind-blowing.

Had a similar experience when I got out to Betelgeuse and dropped out of my jump into supercruise; the star looming gigantic in my view... and still over 2,000 ls away! o_O
 

Privata

Privata
Infidel Deity said:
First acknowledge that there is no meaning in anything what so ever.
Then acknowledge how great and awesome that is.
Everything is everything. :)
Click to expand...


I allways had the nation that we were nothing and small , but up to know never saw it as a positive...
I wonder what the HTC vive is going to do to me

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CMDR Corlas said:
The scale of things, in a universal context, are way too big for people to conceive generally, and I totally agree that Elite really does an amazing job at making these vast numbers more tangible.

I remember reading an article a while back about a particularly dense star cluster (looked for it, but I can't find it now). The number seemed impressive at the time, but really didn't mean anything; a few thousands stars in a cluster a dozen or so light years across. After playing Elite though, that number is totally mind-blowing.

Had a similar experience when I got out to Betelgeuse and dropped out of my jump into supercruise; the star looming gigantic in my view... and still over 2,000 ls away! o_O
Click to expand...
Elite dangerous : amazing space game , amazing educational game. if I ever adopt (fiancee cant give birth) I think elite will be used to teach about space if the child has an intrest
 

Stupid_hippy

Stupid_hippy
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. - Douglas Adams
 
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twelvebore

T
Elite is based in a single Galaxy. It is modelled on our own Galaxy, reasonably well as far as I can see so far. But a single Galaxy nevertheless.

In the observable Universe there are as many galaxies as there are stars in our Galaxy. A hundred billion or so.

So when you fly around the Elite Galaxy and find an undiscovered star system, imagine instead that you have found an undiscovered Galaxy with a hundred billion stars in it. That is the scale of the Universe.

I love the Douglas Adams quote, but really he should have said something along the lines of "You think it's a long way to the other side of your Galaxy, that's peanuts compared to space". Prolly wouldn't've been so funny though :)
 

ChubbyBunneh

ChubbyBunneh
Welcome to the pale blue dot.
064c463bf.jpg
 
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Privata

Privata
twelvebore said:
Elite is based in a single Galaxy. It is modelled on our own Galaxy, reasonably well as far as I can see so far. But a single Galaxy nevertheless.

In the observable Universe there are as many galaxies as there are stars in our Galaxy. A hundred billion or so.

So when you fly around the Elite Galaxy and find an undiscovered star system, imagine instead that you have found an undiscovered Galaxy with a hundred billion stars in it. That is the scale of the Universe.

I love the Douglas Adams quote, but really he should have said something along the lines of "You think it's a long way to the other side of your Galaxy, that's peanuts compared to space". Prolly wouldn't've been so funny though :)
Click to expand...
I have allways seen the universe like a grass field , eatch blade of grass is a galaxy and the microscopic elements inside it are planets and so on.
that makes me think , if we zoom out do galaxies form something else? and if there is something bigger what does that form if you zoom out?
 

who?

who?
You are tiny, relative to the galaxy. You are also huge, relative to a quark. You are simultaneously tiny and huge. You're like the Schrodinger's Cat of size.

I do love the sense of scale the game gives you though. Travelling at 400m/s, that's pretty fast. But then that's nothing in comparison to the 30km/s of supercruise. And that scales allllll the way up to 2,001c. But even at THAT speed it takes a long time to fly across a single star system, and it's grossly impractical for spanning the distance between systems. For that, you need hyperspace which means travelling up to c. 80Ly in about 5 seconds. Yet even at that reality-embarrassing speed, it still takes ages to fly across the galaxy. And that's just one galaxy.

But, then, a galaxy is really, really tiny... relative to a universe.
 

ahwala

A
Privata said:
I have allways seen the universe like a grass field , eatch blade of grass is a galaxy and the microscopic elements inside it are planets and so on.
that makes me think , if we zoom out do galaxies form something else? and if there is something bigger what does that form if you zoom out?
Click to expand...

Galaxies form groups and clusters, which themselves form superclusters, which form filaments, and those are afaik the largest known structures in the observable universe.
 
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frostypaw

frostypaw
The Pale Blue Dot speech rather sticks in the memory - made a big impact on me.

Then it was years later really understanding that the only way we and everything we see and touch and feel can exist is the generations of suns going supernova billions of years before expending their lives fusing hydrogen into fused heavier elements. Their deaths throwing their contents across space in vast quantity and the shockwaves and cataclysms sparking more star formation to fuse even heavier elements and again and again until there was enough of everything that we have enough to produce the galaxy we see and our world and life and us.... that pops my head still.
 
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